We’re in the last stretch of our family vacation in Tahoe. It looks like we’re keeping fairly close to our budget. We’re a family of four, two parents, one 6-year old and one 2-year old daughter living in the Bay Area. So, here are a few of the things we did to make this incredible vacation not do terrible damage to the bank account and rough estimate of what we’ll have spent by the time we head home. Maybe you’ll find some of these tips useful:
- Go during daughter #1’s Spring Break. Savings = $150+ (since we would have had to put her in Spring Break Camp)
- Borrowed ski clothes for the kids. Our community has a Yahoo Group where you can ask questions and make offers to other families in the community. I put out a call to borrow stuff and got a few offers from people to let us borrow ski pants, jackets and boots. Incredible the kindness of strangers! Cost = $0
- Research discounted lift tickets and special offers. By doing a little research on the Internet I found some greats deals. Kirkwood Ski Resort has an offer for March where if you put your child (aged 3+) in a full day ski or snowboard class, they’ll give you a full day lift ticket for a parent for free. One day of ski school = $110, we did this for two days, Cost = $220 (I could have gotten this down to $170 if I would have booked the 2 out of 3 consecutive days package)
- Take advantage of the “parent predicament” lift tickets that many resorts offer. This allows the parents to share a lift ticket so that one can stay in the lodge and hang out with child while the other one hits the slopes. Cost = $0
- Purchase lift tickets before leaving home at Sports Basement before heading up to the mountains. We were able to buy Kirkwood full day adult passes for $50 each. We bought four. If we don’t use them, we can return them before April 15. Cost = $100 since we’ll probably return at least two of them.
- I also did a little research on where to rent equipment locally for a reasonable price. Again, Sports Basement, had a great deal. We rented ski equipment for 2 adults and 1 child for $100 for 4 days. In line with other ski rental places, Sports Basement doesn’t charge for the day you pick up or the day you drop off.
- Pack up groceries from home. We loaded up a cooler and some shopping bags with groceries that we had around the house so that when we arrived we didn’t have to buy a bunch of food. This not only saved us money, but it allowed us to settle in to our borrowed Tahoe home right away instead of stopping to buy groceries on the away. Cost = $0
- Brought food and drinks to the lodge along with entertainment for the little one who wasn’t in ski school. Many lodges frown on this so do it at your own risk but we had no problem. We generally purchased some stuff French fries, hot chocolate and maybe even a burger here or there. Estimated cost = $100 ($20/day)
- One grocery trip while in Tahoe, Cost = $100 (including a $30 bottle of Scotch for our hosts)
- Last but not least, we were very lucky and were able to get a free place to stay thanks to some very generous and gracious family friends. If that’s not an option for you, Kirkwood has some great ski & stay deals which would save you the 45-minute – 1.5 hour drive each way that we did. Cost = $350 ($50/day for utilities plus $100 for cleaning)
We had a few unbudgeted items as well, like some socks and turtlenecks at Sports Basement and a couple half day tickets for the first couple days that we didn’t plan to ski (the snow has been amazing!!) so that was probably another $150 in half day lift tickets at other ski resorts. I’ll leave out the other stuff since it’s not really a cost of this particular vacation and can be amortized.
Here’s how the trip totaled out: Expenses = $970 minus the credit for what we would have spent on camp ($150) puts us at $820 for a 5-day ski vacation in Lake Tahoe. That works out to $205 per person. Scoring the sweet deals made the vacation that much more enjoyable!
Recent Comments